Hydrocracker Theatre Company

The New World Order
Part of The Barbican autumn season 2011
at Shoreditch Town Hall, 16 November to 11 December

by Harold Pinter
directed by Ellie Jones

Five stars "A shattering experience that brings Pinter's world directly home" - Michael Billington The Guardian.

five stars "The sense of being trapped within a brutal state machine builds and intensifies during this brilliant site-specific production by Hydrocracker" - Jane Hughes, The Independent

Four stars "Now this is what I call site-specific...Pinter, the master of menace, would surely have revelled in this." - Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

Four stars "A brilliant balance of wit and coercion. An unnerving but thrilling evening." Dominic Maxwell, The Times

Four stars "Site-specific theatre is rarely as urgent or as disquieting as it is in the hands of Hydrocracker" Catherine Love, Spoonfed

Four stars "An artistic triumph" - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

Hydrocracker's chilling promenade performance of five Pinter short plays premiered at Brighton Festival in 2007.

In 2011, it has made a timely return during Aung San Suu Kyi's Festival directorship of this year's Brighton Festival. Staged not in the theatre, but a real government building, this darkly compelling production takes its audience on a journey - literally and metaphorically - from the lofty council chambers to the labyrinthine depths below, where the functionaries of the new world order 'keep the world clean for democracy'.

Harold Pinter was arguably the greatest British dramatist of his age; he was also our foremost chronicler of political injustice. Played out through five miniature masterpieces, this intimate and immersive performance draws us into the heat of the action, transforming us from passive viewers to complicit witnesses of covert menace and corrupt power.

Chosen for The Guardian’s ‘Pick of the Year’ in 2007, The New World Order Order is an examinaton of political oppression, torture, and the mechanics of what is done in our name.

The Consultant

by Neil Fleming

Theatre503, March 23-April 16, 2011

three stars "Hydrocracker turns the business world into intriguing and gripping theatre... The cast of four, led by Pip Donaghy and James Wilby, is terrific; the swerves of their dialogue intrigue and grip; the crisp staging against Agnes Treplin's gleamingly Modernist set keeps the tension high. Even the scene-changes are exciting " - Jeremy Kingston, The Times

three stars "This lively new play by Neil Fleming... offers sharply funny satire. Geof Church's production is vigorously acted by a strong cast" - Michael Billington, The Guardian

three stars "Fleming is a lively, pleasingly cynical writer" - Time Out

"Entertaining and genuinely funny. Fleming has an ear for dialogue and dissects the meaningless jargon of the corporate world" - The Stage

Faust meets The Office in this blackly comic tale of corporate and personal disaster.

Hugo Shackleton is a man in trouble. And the trouble is, he doesn't even know it.

Chief of a struggling hi-tech company, hounded by competitors, despised by his own Board of Directors, he needs a Big Idea to turn his business around. Except if he comes up with one his wife will leave him.

Into their world rolls James Ross, a charismatic management consultant with a dark past, wheelchair-bound, furious with all mankind, and brilliant. With him comes Nicola Patchett, ferocious strategy analyst, member of Mensa, and a threat to Hugo's marriage of another kind.

James promises Hugo he can change him forever. But once you sign up with The Consultant, he never leaves.